Case Histories Interview with Kate Atkinson and Jason Isaacs

I admit it, I absolutely love Case Histories (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011w4g0), the BBC television adaptation of the first three of Kate Atkinson‘s Jacskson Brodie novels (see http://www.kateatkinson.co.uk). Jason Isaacs is absolutely wonderful as Brodie. The man is a powerful and highly skilled artist and craftsman as his acting shines through beautifully. Yes, I am talking about the very same Jason Isaacs who plays Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter film series (who shares a birthday with me, same date same year).

Lorraine and I were unfamiliar with the Brodie novels prior to watching the television series but I’ve now got all of them in my ebook folder on my android.

Actually, we have been quite taken with the series and how all the little bits tend to dovetail into one another. Honestly, we felt very much as if the show were almost a more serious and less fantastical homage to the likes of Douglas Adams‘ series of Dirk Gently Holistic Detective Novels . . . if you haven’t seen the BBC adaptation of the first in that series, go find a copy and watch it then watch the first episode of the Case Histories series . . . hmmmm, detective scraping by, lots and lots of coincidences that lead into one another, even an old lady who hires our detective to find a missing cat . . . there’s even time travel of sorts except that in Dirk Gently the cat literally travels through time while in the Jackson Brodie pieces the time travel is based upon the subjective revisiting traumatic events by our characters through visceral recall. Of course, these are very very different pieces and in no way derivative but the happy coincidences are there, making the experience a beautiful piece of synchronicity in its own right.

Here is an interview between author Kate Atkinson and actor Jason Isaacs which is a very nice exploration into character and adaptation.

The production is first rate with very very highly skilled actors bringing the characters from the page to life. There have been some changes to plot and character as the pieces are brought to the screen but they fit together nicely and all involved try to be very respectful of the source material. Of particular interest is that Jason Isaacs did the recordings for the books-on-tape versions of the novels long before he was approached to star in the series so he knows the stories and the characters inside out. His first response was that it was kind of a downer that he only got to play one character, lead or no, as he absolutely loved doing all of them for the recordings. However, he obviously throws himself into the Brodie character and loves the stories and it certainly shows in his performances.

The television series is based upon the first three of the current four novels, with each novel being adapted as a mini-arc of two episodes . . . which, if you DVR watching the two episodes back-to-back works pretty much the same as roughly self-contained film in and of themselves, although you will want to start at the beginning and move forward.

I find the way that Atkinson has created strong characters who have traumatic pasts that often come back to haunt them compelling, showing just how we are created by our experiences and our emotional relationship with those experiences. The synchronicity of how everything affects everything else and how coincidence is rarely simply coincidence but has meaningful impact is very nice.

If you love mysteries, you will love Case Histories and if you’re not a mystery person, you will very likely still enjoy the show as this is certainly not typical potboiler stuff.

And . . . now, some trailer teaser thingies.

BBC Trailer for Case Histories